OGLE 2008--BLG--290: An accurate measurement of the limb darkening of a Galactic Bulge K Giant spatially resolved by microlensing

TL;DR

This paper presents precise measurements of limb darkening for a Galactic Bulge K giant star using gravitational microlensing, providing insights into stellar atmospheres and resolving temperature estimate discrepancies.

Contribution

It offers the most accurate limb-darkening coefficients for a microlensed K giant, improving stellar atmosphere models and addressing temperature estimate inconsistencies.

Findings

Measured limb-darkening coefficients in six photometric bands.

Estimated stellar effective temperature around 4700 K.

Identified and proposed solutions for temperature estimate discrepancies.

Abstract

Gravitational microlensing is not only a successful tool for discovering distant exoplanets, but it also enables characterization of the lens and source stars involved in the lensing event. In high magnification events, the lens caustic may cross over the source disk, which allows a determination of the angular size of the source and additionally a measurement of its limb darkening. When such extended-source effects appear close to maximum magnification, the resulting light curve differs from the characteristic Paczynski point-source curve. The exact shape of the light curve close to the peak depends on the limb darkening of the source. Dense photometric coverage permits measurement of the respective limb-darkening coefficients. In the case of microlensing event OGLE 2008-BLG-290, the K giant source star reached a peak magnification of about 100. Thirteen different telescopes have covered this event in eight different photometric bands. Subsequent light-curve analysis yielded measurements of linear limb-darkening coefficients of the source in six photometric bands. The best-measured coefficients lead to an estimate of the source effective temperature of about 4700 +100-200 K. However, the photometric estimate from colour-magnitude diagrams favours a cooler temperature of 4200 +-100 K. As the limb-darkening measurements, at least in the CTIO/SMARTS2 V and I bands, are among the most accurate obtained, the above disagreement needs to be understood. A solution is proposed, which may apply to previous events where such a discrepancy also appeared.